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Wednesday, May 02, 2012

Wednesday Recap: Shootout At Texas School

Good Morning Everybody,

After beginning class early yesterday at 8:30 a.m. we wrapped yesterday’s activities with the Boxers and Boots party complete with parade at about 11:00 p.m. last evening. Lots of students and instructors stayed much later but LaDawn and I bailed so we could get a little sleep for class today. I’m kind of looking forward to how the rest of the class will be feeling this morning;~)

Time is very short this morning so let me share with you a few images from my shoot yesterday. Here we go.

Church #1 In the Morning:

This image above was an example of how to capture good lighting (loop lighting) on your subject when just shooting with the natural light. I had the bride sit in one of the pews and then asked her to turn her head till I had that very beautiful light on her face. An exit door to camera right was the source of this beautiful light. The lens racked out to 135mm compressed the background for a nice effect for this image.

Image #2 above was another one of my favorites from yesterday’s shoot. Actually, this image and the one below were taken in the simplest of locations – the entrance foyer of the church. What attracted my attention in both cases was the lighting, in this example specifically, the lighting effect created on the very simple wall.

In the above image it was the lighting pattern being cast against the white wall. I figured if I could move my bride into a shadowed part of the foyer and use the lighting pattern in the back ground, I could pull off a very interesting photograph. By controlling the cone of light from my off-camera shoe mount flash with a beer cozy – yes, you hear me right - I was able to keep the strobe light off the back wall and concentrate the light onto only my bride.

Here is another image captured in the foyer of the church. I was surveying the location and really liked the delineation of tones and colors I saw in this section of the space. I had built in backlighting, some cool yellow tones in the background , and a vase with yellow flowers camera right. It was easy to frame up the subject against the background and then add just a little light from my Z-Ray to give me the direction of light I wanted on my subject.

The image above is another image we made just before heading out to the second church location for the day. As I mentioned in our “Image of The Day” post above, the sun was quite bright. I asked the bride to take up a position under the drive through entrance of the church. That assured soft light on her. Then it was just a simple matter to add the necessary direction al light from camera left with my Quantum flash at full power shooting through my Zumbrella The breeze caught the veil at just the right time for me to get this image.

Church #2 In the Afternoon:

On to our next location – I didn’t do as much shooting at this location as in the morning. I wanted the class to stretch their lighting wings so I let them have the run of the church. One of our models was just hanging around between shoots so I asked if I could get a quick photograph of him, He was happy to oblige.

Everyone else was using the lighting gear so, to get the directional light on this image, I simply pointed my on-camera flash to a nearby wall, thus making it the true light source to give me the lighting I wanted on the groom’s face. It sure beats on-camera, Uncle Harry, blast flash.

Our afternoon church was quite a treat to work in – great architectural lines, bright, and lots of cool props, like this grand piano to work with. I first surveyed the location to see what I had going on in the composition. I loved the lines in the ceiling and decided to use them to frame up our groom. Notice how all lines lead to our subject.

Placing his head at the 3rd nodal point of the frame and lighting with my strobe at 1/4 power through my Zumbrella gave me exactly what I was looking for.

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Hey gang, that’s it for me today. Class starts in just about an hour so I’ve got to get moving. I hope to have some images for you again tomorrow from today’s shoot. Don’t forget to check back.

BTW….Several of these images need some additional enhancement in Lightroom and/or Photoshop. Due to my very limited available time while teaching this week I will go back later to remove exit signs, un-wanted reflections, straps…..

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David Ziser, an internationally renowned portrait and wedding photographer, has shared his knowledge with ten’s-of-thousands of photographers, in 5 languages, and in 14 countries worldwide.
Studio Photograph magazine has extolled..."Award winning photographer, David Ziser, is showing the world how to take wedding pictures." His "Digital WakeUp Call tour was acclaimed as one of the "best ever" seminars on digital photography.